I don't think that it is coincidence that I get the chance to earn a little extra money writing a hardware review in the same week that the Creative Zen Portable Media Centres appear in our shops. I think it is fate. And you can't fight fate.

So I bought one.

First impressions, very shiny. Second impressions, ugh, it's got fingermarks all over it! Still, a susceptibility to fingermarks didn't stop the Ipod from becomming a big success, so I mustn't hold that against it. And you can clean the fingermarks off.

Third impression, it does something that I really didn't expect. You press the power button and it comes straight on. You press it again and it goes off. No waiting for operating systems to load here. It just goes. The user interface is very pretty. The preloaded content (a bunch very funny Creative adverts, some TV show clips and some movie clips) is quite diverting. However, it does point up what I feel is the biggest failing of the device. The screen is OK, but the contrast could be better. It is quite watchable, but nowhere near as good as the screen on my phone. Apart from that, everything is hugely impressive. Looking at photographs (even if they were not taken by me) and listening to music at the same time is great fun.

Anyhoo, now to load some of my stuff on. After installing the drivers it is time to load up Windows Media Player 10 and transfer some content. At this point things come to a juddering halt. I'm not sure of the thoughts that went through the heads of the folks that designed the user interface at this point, but I'm pretty sure of the ones that went through mine when I tried to use it. If I am moving things from one place (my computer) to another (my shiny new media centre) I'm going to be looking for words like transfer or move (or perhaps even slide). I am not going to be looking for words like "sync". So after a while frustration sets in and I resort to just dragging the files over by hand, since the device shows up as a storage device in My Computer. I've since found out that the user manual (hidden in a pdf file on the CD) is fairly clear on what to do, but I still think it is a bit of a mess when used with Media Player and not a bit intuitive. But perhaps it is just me, and I suppose I might learn to love it. But I didn't want to have to learn at all.

After putting a few music CDs on there (with album covers as well) it is time to turn my attention to video. What I really want to do, of course, is watch DVDs on the device. Now you can argue about the legality of this if you like, but I don't see a difference between ripping CDs and ripping DVDs in this context. Unfortunately there is nothing supplied with the media centre which lets you do this. And media player is no help either (but I kind of expected that). So it is over to http://www.makayama.com/dvdtopocketpc.html and out with the plastic to get a copy of their transfer program. Which works wonderfully.

So now I've got a couple of films on there and the device is really growing on me big time. I wasn't sure I'd have a use for a something which let me carry movies around. I could see a point in having portable music, but video is something else. However, it works really well. Anywhere you would read a book you can now watch a film instead. And the battery life is shaping up nicely too.

So, if you come into some money which you weren't expecting, I reckon there are a lot worse things you could spend it on.

And now I've got to go off and write the review to pay for it......